Five Tip Friday – BlackBerry PlayBook Browsing Tips

Welcome to the first Five Tip Friday here at the Inside BlackBerry® Help Blog, where I plan on sharing five tips and tricks on all things BlackBerry® smartphone and BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet! I want to pass along any tips and tricks you care to share as well, so make sure you leave a comment so I can include it in the future.

For our first week, here are a few of my tips while using the browser on a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet:

1. Double tap to zoom in and out while browsing the Web

If you are viewing a blog – let’s say the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog – and you want to zoom in on a post, you can pinch to zoom or double tap, which I like because it zooms in the right on the column. To zoom out again, just repeat the process.

To help show what I mean, I’ve placed a red X where I was tapping on the screen. Here is a screenshot before double tapping on the red X:

After double tapping on the red X in the previous screenshot:

2. Double tap to make Adobe® Flash® objects full screen

I know I just mentioned the double tap, but this is different (in a very cool way)! If a website has a video you want to watch or a game you want to play, double tap on it to make it full screen. When you want to go back to the website again, just swipe down from the top bezel. I use this tip when I watch cooking videos in the kitchen. 🙂

To help show what I mean again, the red X is where I am tapping on the screen. Here is a screenshot before double tapping on the red X:

After double tapping on the red X in the previous screenshot:

3. Open Link in a New Tab

This is a quick and useful tip I use whenever I encounter something I want to check out after I finished visiting a website. To do this, press and hold on a link and a menu will appear with a few options, one of the options will be to open the link in a new tab.

The following screenshot shows the menu that appears after I tapped on ‘Read More’ for a few seconds:

4. Press and hold .com for more options

When entering a website address, you can press and hold on the .com button to get a menu the following extensions: .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .ca, .biz

5. Enable Private Browsing

When private browsing is turned on, the browser only stores your history, cached files, cookies, and other information temporarily. This information is deleted when you close the browser. To enable this, swipe down from the top bezel while using the browser and select Options, followed by tapping Privacy & Security.

Inside this menu, set the Private Browsing switch to On.

You can easily identify if Private Browsing is enabled, as the browser will show “Private” in the top right corner that I’ve circled in red in the following screenshot. To turn it off, complete the same steps but toggle Private browsing to off.

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